I wouldn't call them dumb since they allow TiVo to continue to offer lifetime. I imagine TiVo would have to make changes if everyone opted for lifetime.

Exactly! I'm also grateful that many people still choose to watch live TV and commercials to subsidize those that don't want to. I was at dentist the other day and subjected to NBC live morning show and it must have been 60% commercials. I told them to turn it off after 10 minutes of that nonsense.

I wouldn't call them dumb since they allow TiVo to continue to offer lifetime. I imagine TiVo would have to make changes if everyone opted for lifetime.

They would just amortize over 4 years, and they'd be fine. They would take a bit of a hit, but their business wouldn't fundamentally fall apart.

Quote:

Originally Posted by moyekj

Exactly! I'm also grateful that many people still choose to watch live TV and commercials to subsidize those that don't want to. I was at dentist the other day and subjected to NBC live morning show and it must have been 60% commercials. I told them to turn it off after 10 minutes of that nonsense.

It would change some things, but the big drivers, at least off the big four networks, are cable carriage fees, so I'm not sure that we'd lose a lot if no one watched commercials. We may be in for some big changes if any cable or satellite carriers are able to break out of the packages and go a-la-carte. I think if that happened on a wide scale, we would rapidly see an implosion of hundreds of cable channels, and the quality of the remaining few (both the bitrate of the video, and the quality of the actual content) go way up.

They would just amortize over 4 years, and they'd be fine. They would take a bit of a hit, but their business wouldn't fundamentally fall apart.

It would change some things, but the big drivers, at least off the big four networks, are cable carriage fees, so I'm not sure that we'd lose a lot if no one watched commercials. We may be in for some big changes if any cable or satellite carriers are able to break out of the packages and go a-la-carte. I think if that happened on a wide scale, we would rapidly see an implosion of hundreds of cable channels, and the quality of the remaining few (both the bitrate of the video, and the quality of the actual content) go way up.

They would take a hit on anyone who has the unit for more than 4 years, which is actually quite common. I've had my lifetime Tivo for exactly 4 years, so starting this month I'm actually costing Tivo money to keep my service going.

As to your second point, you couldn't be more wrong. For primetime network TV, there are two sources of income. Affiliation Fees and advertising. AFFILIATES are allowed to, and often encouraged, to charge carriage fees, but this can usually only be recouped through affiliate fees (and aren't even close to enough to offset programming costs or the loss of advertising).

With cable networks, the model is set up a bit different, but the loss of advertising would be a significant blow to them as well. Assuming a cable network charges 25 cents per subscriber, and also assuming the network is available in 100 million homes, income from subscriber fees is only 25 million a month. It's significant, but 25 million a month doesn't go very far in licensing content, paying salaries, creating original content, paying utilities, office space, transponder time, equipment, etc.

To move to a completely ad free model, they'd have to start charging $5-10 per month in subscriber fees, which would translate to $10-15 by the time the cost is passed down to the consumer. This model can already be seen through HBO, Showtime, etc. For broadcast TV, these rates would have to be even higher, because costs to produce are also much higher.

Local TV stations actually make most of their money with local newscasts, because they get to sell 100% of the ad inventory.

They would take a hit on anyone who has the unit for more than 4 years, which is actually quite common. I've had my lifetime Tivo for exactly 4 years, so starting this month I'm actually costing Tivo money to keep my service going.

As to your second point, you couldn't be more wrong. For primetime network TV, there are two sources of income. Affiliation Fees and advertising. AFFILIATES are allowed to, and often encouraged, to charge carriage fees, but this can usually only be recouped through affiliate fees (and aren't even close to enough to offset programming costs or the loss of advertising).

With cable networks, the model is set up a bit different, but the loss of advertising would be a significant blow to them as well. Assuming a cable network charges 25 cents per subscriber, and also assuming the network is available in 100 million homes, income from subscriber fees is only 25 million a month. It's significant, but 25 million a month doesn't go very far in licensing content, paying salaries, creating original content, paying utilities, office space, transponder time, equipment, etc.

To move to a completely ad free model, they'd have to start charging $5-10 per month in subscriber fees, which would translate to $10-15 by the time the cost is passed down to the consumer. This model can already be seen through HBO, Showtime, etc. For broadcast TV, these rates would have to be even higher, because costs to produce are also much higher.

Local TV stations actually make most of their money with local newscasts, because they get to sell 100% of the ad inventory.

Yes, they would take a hit. That doesn't mean that overall, over the life of the units, that they would not make money. They would.

I said that the carriage fees drive everything EXCEPT the big 4 networks, which is true.

For cable, HBO spends a LOT more money producing really good content than most of the cable channels. They are an outlier. Most of the cable channels could survive on the lot less. If we truly go a la carte, however, we will see an implosion of channels, since relatively few will get the masses of subscribers needed to stay in business, unless it's stacked so that most people just keep bloated packages.

I've never heard of local newscasts being that profitable, but rather as drivers for the network shows. If they really are making that much money off of the local ads, then the whole network model is completely pointless. NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX could just go national on cable, and let all the local channels go to local news and syndicated content.

You aren't costing Tivo any money. You are just now seeing a return on your investment by paying for lifetime vs paying monthly.

Yeah I don't think Tivo is losing money on lifetime subs after 4 years, the cost to provide guide data is less than $2.50 per month. And they get other revenue from all the ads and data mining on your box anyway, so that might pay for the guide.

They're not making any money off of you I'd bet, but they're not losing anything.

Yeah I don't think Tivo is losing money on lifetime subs after 4 years, the cost to provide guide data is less than $2.50 per month. And they get other revenue from all the ads and data mining on your box anyway, so that might pay for the guide.

They're not making any money off of you I'd bet, but they're not losing anything.

There are two parts to Lifetime vs Monthly, 1) what you said above if true and 2) if after say a year or so a Lifetime TiVo stops being used, after 6 months of non use the TiVo goes off the account (If started up again it will go back on the TiVo account), with monthly one would just stop paying, we don't know how many lifetime TiVos are taken out of service before the 4 year time (say go bad from a flood home fire like in CA etc.) vs how many people stop paying the monthly cost, without that data we can't tell how much money Lifetime Service vs Monthly makes for TiVo over the long run. What we do know is that a few people are still running the Series 1 that are over 10 years old, I would bet is that nobody with monthly is still paying to run a Series 1 (in the USA).
Many people on this Forum will sell their Lifetime TiVo to upgrade, many others will just take the old Lifetime TiVo out of service and purchase another newer model TiVo, they will not take the time to sell on E-Bay or like.

The speculation wasn't about LT vs. monthly, it was about whether it costs them anything (net) to service an LT customer after 4 years.

But unless one looks at the total picture it would not be clear even if TiVo paid money for guide service as long as the TiVo is connected (after 4 years) that it would be a loss for TiVo compared to monthly. On a single TiVo there would be cost after 4 years that not offset by TiVo accrual method, but I don't know if ads make up the difference and how much total money the average monthly TiVo generates over its working lifetime compared to a lifetime TiVo. IE if the average monthly TiVo stops having service after say 26 months than Lifetime is a better deal for TiVo.

But unless one looks at the total picture it would not be clear even if TiVo paid money for guide service as long as the TiVo is connected (after 4 years) that it would be a loss for TiVo compared to monthly. On a single TiVo there would be cost after 4 years that not offset by TiVo accrual method, but I don't know if ads make up the difference and how much total money the average monthly TiVo generates over its working lifetime compared to a lifetime TiVo. IE if the average monthly TiVo stops having service after say 26 months than Lifetime is a better deal for TiVo.

TiVo's quarterly filings to the SEC provide some insight into the recurring costs TiVo incurs per retail (TiVo-Owned) subscriber. I won't go into details on the image below unless requested but a closer look at the numbers shows that TiVo's costs per DVR box are approximately $2.00/box/month. I suspect that there are some discounts associated with licenses on the Mini but I would not be surprised if Mini costs exceed $1.00/Mini/month.

FWIW, it was also revealed during Rovi's Q1 conference call that they receive approximately $1.00/mo for their guide data product (similar to tribune) and $0.25/mo for their tablet (e.g., iOS, Android) product. I'm nearly certain that TiVo pays similar fees to tribune. I expect that the cost of guide data and other licenses on the Mini is heavily discounted since the user is already a subscriber but the cost is not zero. Clearly this cost is recurring over the life of the box so there is some point after the box costs are amortized, in the case of lifetime, where the lifetimed Mini costs TiVo monthly while generating zero revenue.

TiVo's quarterly filings to the SEC provide some insight into the recurring costs TiVo incurs per retail (TiVo-Owned) subscriber. I won't go into details on the image below unless requested but a closer look at the numbers shows that TiVo's costs per DVR box are approximately $2.00/box/month. I suspect that there are some discounts associated with licenses on the Mini but I would not be surprised if Mini costs exceed $1.00/Mini/month.

FWIW, it was also revealed during Rovi's Q1 conference call that they receive approximately $1.00/mo for their guide data product (similar to tribune) and $0.25/mo for their tablet (e.g., iOS, Android) product. I'm nearly certain that TiVo pays similar fees to tribune. I expect that the cost of guide data and other licenses on the Mini is heavily discounted since the user is already a subscriber but the cost is not zero. Clearly this cost is recurring over the life of the box so there is some point after the box costs are amortized, in the case of lifetime, where the lifetimed Mini costs TiVo monthly while generating zero revenue.

It that zero revenue that I have a question about as TiVo sells ads and viewing data, but I have no idea how much per box TiVo gets for that.

It that zero revenue that I have a question about as TiVo sells ads and viewing data, but I have no idea how much per box TiVo gets for that.

You'll notice a slight bump in ARPU for the last two quarters. That is service revenue associated with TiVo's acquisition of TRA. TiVo's advertising campaign's, prior to TRA, contribute a very small amount (pennies) per user/box.

I expect that the cost of guide data and other licenses on the Mini is heavily discounted since the user is already a subscriber but the cost is not zero. Clearly this cost is recurring over the life of the box so there is some point after the box costs are amortized, in the case of lifetime, where the lifetimed Mini costs TiVo monthly while generating zero revenue.

As has been mentioned elsewhere here, if Tivo is paying anything for guide data on the Mini they either have some very bad contract negotiators or they're getting a discount on the main boxes. The incremental guide data cost for Minis should be zero.

I think Tivo calculated how much the mini would cannibalize sales of existing products and lifetime subscriptions and then set their pricing accordingly. I think they should have just accepted the cannibalization and tried to make up for it with volume since they would be a low cost leader.

I think Tivo calculated how much the mini would cannibalize sales of existing products and lifetime subscriptions and then set their pricing accordingly. I think they should have just accepted the cannibalization and tried to make up for it with volume since they would be a low cost leader.

That's my thought or they should have come up with a more reasonable fee for lifetime.